


nights, by the light of whatever would burn

by madamebadger



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Longing, Mass Effect Kink Meme, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 12:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1857633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In every life, you have to make trade-offs. Shepard has always been at peace with what she's given up to be who and what she is, mostly because she's focused her attention on everything but her own personal life. Even her dearest friends know that she will always, to some degree, hold them at arm's length.</p>
<p>But the war has a way of burning everyone down to their most essential selves, and in the end even Shepard can't help seeing, finally, what she wants, what she needs--and what she may have lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nights, by the light of whatever would burn

**Author's Note:**

> Written a couple of years ago for the Mass Effect Kink Meme, shortly after ME3 came out. I fixed some typos but otherwise haven't edited.

Talking to Aria always left Shepard feeling exhausted and a little grimy, and this time she’d done it alone so that the rest of her squad could take some much-needed shore leave. She could’ve really used Garrus at her back, too—Aria didn’t like Garrus but she respected him, and respect was worth a lot more than liking these days. But Garrus had wanted to go see about the refugees and that was hardly a request Shepard was going to turn down, especially after he’d been so reliably at her back on Tuchanka.

Still, negotiating with Aria on her own just made her feel tired.

The pulse of dance music throbbed through the air, but Purgatory’s little tables off to the side were sheltered enough from the booming speakers that you could speak without shouting. Shepard felt herself heading for that little bit of quiet instinctively, even before she saw Joker waving her over.

“Taking the chance to unwind?” Joker asked when she reached his table, nudging a chair out for her with a foot.

“I only wish.” Shepard sank into the chair with a sigh. “It’s good to see you getting away from the ship for a bit, though. It’s a wonder your ass hasn’t grafted itself to the helm chair.” Ostensibly, calling EDI his personal mechanical assistant was Joker’s way of sneaking her onto the Citadel, but Shepard knew perfectly well that the ruse worked both ways. Joker couldn’t go very far on his own, and was too proud to accept help from his crewmates. But it was different, apparently, with EDI.

As if he’d read her mind, Joker said, “EDI went to get some drinks. If I’d known you were here I woulda had her pick up something for you too.” Shepard made a don’t-worry-about-it gesture. Joker leaned forward and went on. “So, while she’s not here… what do you think? About me and EDI?” Shepard knew that tone of his voice: joking as always but not really joking after all, his smile going a bit lopsided as he tried to balance the light tone with the fact that he really did care about what she had to say. “Bad idea, or _worst_ idea?”

Shepard turned over possible answers in her head. On the one hand: _You know I like EDI, I really do, and more than that, I trust her, but… hanging with sapient machines has never really been something that worked out for people._ On the other hand: _Maybe if the quarians had decided to bone the geth instead of trying to kill them all, they would’ve all been living happy, creepy lives on their homeworld the past three hundred years_.

Neither answer seemed quite right, not in the light of Joker grinning at her half-hopeful and half-fearful of her answer, and EDI moving serenely through the crowd, pale and shining as any ghost. So instead she held her hands out, palms-up. “Joker, I’ve never been much good at romantic relationships.”

“Aw, c’mon, Commander, you don’t have to be polite. You can tell me what you think.”

“I’m not being polite.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. You’re Commander Shepard. You’re good at _everything_. Headbutting krogans, blowing up Reapers, convincing quarians and geth to play nice….”

“Not this.” Shepard rubbed her forehead. “Joker, you’ve known me for years. Have you seen me so much as go on a date with someone?”

“Well.” He frowned slightly. “No. Kaidan and Liara seemed interested back in the day, but…?”

“Nothing came of it.” She’d turned down Kaidan, and she’d done what she could to discourage Liara, with apparent success. They were friends now, which was as she wanted it.

“Yeah, I noticed. But I figured you were just, you know, busy saving the world.”

“I am.” Shepard’s fingers drummed on the tabletop. “But I’m also really, really bad with relationships. Want advice on military tactics or negotiation with hostiles and I’ll give you my best shot, but romance? No.”

Joker sat back, unusually sober. “I—I’m sorry, Commander,” he said, and Shepard realized that she must have sounded sharper than she’d really meant. She tried to smile, and made herself stop drumming her fingers. “I wouldn’t have asked if I’d—”

“It’s fine,” Shepard said. “It’s not your fault for bringing it up. I just—” Joker looked so _worried_ , and she couldn’t help but try to explain. Anyway, she’d known him for so long, longer than anyone else on her crew…. “I’ve only had one serious relationship in my life and it ended… very badly, let’s just say that. And I’m not really cut out for casual flings. So.”

Joker didn’t seem to know what to say to that, no ready quip for this eventuality. After just a heartbeat of awkward silence, Shepard took pity and went on. “It is what it is. Now,” and she raised her eyebrows, a deliberate move calculated to lighten the mood (and, not least, distract her from a current of thought that she _did not_ want to indulge right now), “I’m not going to see any of this in those ‘Commander Shepard’ jokes floating around, am I?”

“Me?” He gave her a wounded expression. “What makes you think those are my fault?”

“Joker, I’m not stupid,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Have you heard the one, ‘Death once had a near-Shepard experience’? I’m particularly proud of that one.”

Shepard laughed and smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “That’s awful.”

“I aim to please, Commander,” he said, and then EDI was back, carrying a beer in one hand and a frothy pink drink in the other.

“I asked the bartender to make me something she thought I would like,” EDI said, her tone as level as ever and yet still managing to express a distinct note of dubiousness. “I do not know what this is.”

Shepard took it out of her hands and tasted it, then handed it back. “At a guess, vodka, some kind of fruit extract, more vodka, and enough sugar syrup that you don’t know how drunk you’re getting.” She hesitated. “If you can even get drunk. Can you get drunk?” Frightening thought. Part of EDI’s consciousness was here in her mobile body, but most of her was still, well, the Normandy. What would happen if you got your ship drunk? Shepard doubted engineering wanted to find out. _She_ didn’t particularly want to find out.

“I cannot metabolize any substance as you mean the term, and thus I cannot become intoxicated through metabolic means, although of course I do consume energy in other forms,” EDI said. Well, that was a relief. “And I lack a sense of taste, although I can recognize a wide variety of chemical components via sensors in my chassis. But I can chew and swallow food and I have a holding tank in my abdomen, which allows me to appear to consume ingestibles for infiltration and stealth purposes.”

“Is this an infiltration mission, then?” Shepard asked, amused.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“A holding tank,” Joker said, and wrinkled his nose. “Geez, EDI, thanks for _that_ image.”

“I do not see the problem. You have a holding tank in your abdomen too.” She paused, and her mouth flickered into the little almost-a-smile that was becoming so familiar. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Yeah, but… no.” He got up (Shepard didn’t miss the way EDI reached out smoothly and with no fuss at all to brace his elbow, _or_ the way EDI let him do most of the work himself). “Let’s go wander around and pretend we’re going to dance.”

“Have fun,” Shepard said, stretching her feet out under the table and enjoying the moment just to sit. So few such moments in her life right now.

“Oh, one more thing.” Joker took EDI’s drink out of her hands and gave it to Shepard. “Might as well drink this, Commander, since apparently EDI won’t appreciate it.”

Shepard took it, and then neatly switched it with Joker’s beer before he could protest. “Not really a pink-drink kind of person, Joker.”

“You really think I want to walk around a club holding a froofy thing in a novelty glass?”

“I think,” Shepard drawled, “that with EDI on your arm, nobody’s going to be looking at your _drink_.”

“Ha,” Joker said, and brightened. “There is that.”

Shepard watched them go. It was funny, how much at the beginning Joker had resented EDI, how much EDI had seemed to disdain Joker in turn—even if she hadn’t been a computer, Shepard would never have guessed at this. But it worked, somehow. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Joker had always been half in love with his ship, and now EDI _was_ the ship.

Sometimes things were a lot simpler when you really looked at them.

And sometimes they… were not. 

She wasn’t jealous, she told herself. She wasn’t even envious. Joker was like family, and it was good to see him genuinely happy.

But.

_Not good at everything, Joker_ , she thought wryly, sipping her beer. _Really not._ Joker and EDI had wandered out of sight, but there were reminders everywhere, all the time, if you were feeling sensitized to them. An asari and a human woman cuddled up together by the bar. Two turians (two male? male and female? two female? Turian sexual dimorphism was so subtle that she could never tell) were dancing very close in a shadowy corner. And Shepard could feel the old knot beginning to grow in her stomach.

_Enough of that_ , she told herself, firmly. _You made your choices years ago. You made them for reasons—good reasons. You don’t ever want to play that game again._

It was true, she told herself. It—her one and only serious I’m-in-love-with-you relationship, years ago now but still a knot in her belly when she thought of it—had ended very badly, she’d told Joker, and that wasn’t the half of it. And through her own fault, too. 

No. Better this way. And no point feeling sorry for herself.

Which didn’t mean she had to be in the mood for clubs all the time. She got up, leaving behind the empty beer glass (and, she hoped, the remainder of her dark mood) and made her way back to her ship. On her ship everything was straightforward and right, and she could think.

* * *

“It’s good to have you back on the Normandy, Tali,” Shepard said, when the door whisked closed, leaving diplomats and officials on one side and herself with Garrus and Tali on the other. It felt good to leave the tense chatter behind, if only for a little while. 

“It’s good to be back.” Behind her smoky-amethyst faceplate, Tali’s eyes narrowed happily. If you knew a quarian for long enough (and assuming you paid attention), the helmets didn’t really conceal all that much. Tali was smiling, Shepard knew that, and it almost didn’t matter that she couldn’t see it.

(Having them both here—both of them who, like Joker, had been with her from the beginning—made something unclench a little in her chest. It was stupid and irrational, and she knew that, but with Garrus’s rifle and Tali’s shotgun at her back it felt like there was no way they could do anything _but_ win.)

“So,” Garrus said, pushing the button for the elevator. “Want to try the chocolate?”

“Sure,” Tali said. “We’ll need to sterilize it, though.”

Shepard cocked her head. “How do you even sterilize chocolate without ruining it?”

“Ionizing radiation,” Tali said promptly.

“You carry an ionizing radiation kit on you?”

“No,” Tali said, and then added breezily, “but they’re not too hard to cobble together from parts. I bet I could do it with the things Kasumi left in Port Observation.” Sometimes Shepard wondered whether Tali realized that most people could not, in fact, put together a radiation sterilization device from things lying around.

Garrus laughed, shook his head. “I’ll leave that part to you,” he said dryly. The elevator appeared, and the three stepped in. Garrus hit the button for the crew level. 

“I’ve never actually had chocolate before.” Tali sounded excited, which made her sound younger. No: which made her sound her actual age, instead of ten or more years older than she was. Sobering thought. “How do they even make it dextro?”

“Genetic engineering, I think.” Garrus scratched his damaged mandible. He’d done away with the bandage and didn’t seem so sensitive about his scars anymore, but confessed that it still itched on bad days.

“Must be expensive,” Tali said thoughtfully. Garrus shrugged. The doors whisked open and they stepped out. 

Garrus grabbed the door to keep it from closing and raised his brow-plates inquisitively at Shepard. “You coming? I’m sure we could find some levo chocolate for you.” His mandibles relaxed into a smile. “If my years in C-Sec taught me anything, it’s that if you get three humans together in one place, at least one of them will have chocolate on them.”

Shepard thought about it. On the one hand: putting her feet up in Port Observation, catching up with Tali on what she’d been up to the past six months—filling her in on what they’d been up to. Garrus would brag about his kill count on Tuchanka, but he’d never mention the generals that saluted him on Menae; if Tali was going to hear about that it’d have to be from Shepard. And Tali would start out the proper quarian and end up making gleefully vicious comments about her fellow Admirals, because it was just the three of them. And there would be chocolate, and Tali doing something ill-advised with a jury-rigged bit of equipment to make the chocolate into something she could safely eat, and maybe later something from the vast collection of bottles of alcohol Kasumi had left behind. And Garrus’ terrible cracks, and Tali’s quick mind and quicker tongue—

—and up in the Loft, a list of messages in desperate need of reply that was growing every minute, even as she stood here waffling in the Normandy elevator. People she had to ask favors of, people she had to thank, people she had to encourage. Transmissions she had to send, alternately begging and threatening people to actually get off their sorry asses and fight the threat that no-one could even deny was a threat anymore. And all of it, all of it, literally deathly important.

“I wish I could,” she said, and meant it.

Garrus didn’t let go of the doorframe, and though his mandibles drew in a little bit, it was subtle. “Just for a few minutes, Shepard?” he asked, softly. Behind him, Tali raised her chin hopefully.

“There’s so much to do,” Shepard said. She didn’t let her wistfulness, or for that matter her weariness, creep into her tone. She was the Commander, and even with Garrus and Tali there were limits.

Still Garrus held onto the door for a beat, until EDI’s voice said, “Officer Vakarian, holding the elevator inhibits smooth flow of traffic through the ship.”

“Of course,” Garrus said, and let go. The elevator door, confused, didn’t shut right away, so Shepard could see them continuing down the hallway.

“You said Doctor Michel gave you the chocolate?” Tali was saying, amusement clear in every I-am-asking-a-leading-question tone.

“Yeah?”

“Hmmm.” 

“What?”

“Nothing. Just ‘hmm.’”

“ _What?_ ”

Tali laughed and bumped him affectionately with her elbow, but what she said in response Shepard didn’t hear, because the elevator finally got the message and the doors swished firmly shut.

* * *

In truth, Garrus and Tali’s talents—not to mention her own—were wasted on this kind of mop-up mission. But forcing the husks out of a retaken fueling station—layer by layer, level by level—held a certain satisfaction. It cleared her head; it was something tangible and obvious she could do in this war that was so often muddled and grey.

(And even _she_ couldn’t call it irresponsible to spend time with them, if they were driving out Reaper forces.)

Tali crouched behind a reinforced steel crate, fingers flying over the glowing orange of her omnitool interface. Her drone snapped to shining life with a brief odor of ozone, its pink-purple light reflecting ghostly on Tali’s faceplate. It rose and glided out of cover, its stinging bolts drawing off the husks that had previously been making a beeline for her—and drawing them right into Garrus’ line of sight. She could just see him, under cover many yards away, biding his time for a clear shot.

“Go for the optics, Chatika!” Tali crowed.

One, two, three cracks rent the air as Garrus’ rifle-shots nailed three of the distracted husks, and then his voice crackled across the comm, cool as you please. “It’s a husk, Tali, it doesn’t have optics.”

Tali unholstered her shotgun, but there was nothing left for her to shoot; her drone had pulled all the husks into Garrus’ line of sight, and he’d dispatched them neatly. “Would you prefer ‘tear his face off, Chatika?”

“That’s a little bloodthirsty.”

“What can I say? Sometimes a girl feels a little bloodthirsty.”

“A woman after my own heart,” Shepard murmured. She signaled Tali to follow her. They worked their way forward behind cover. Shepard’s HUD blinked, informing her that Garrus was moving, too, working around the perimeter of the room.

“So Tali and I were having an argument,” Garrus said as they worked their way forward. Shepard repressed a grin. A few years ago, she would’ve frowned upon such a frivolous and unauthorized use of the combat comm channel; now it was the highlight of her day.

“We need you to mediate,” Tali agreed.

“Yeah?”

“We were having the chocolate—” Tali began.

“Let me ask, it’s about me,” Garrus interrupted.

“Pushy, pushy,” Tali huffed, exactly as aggrieved as Garrus, which was to say not at all.

They reached the end of the supply bay. Garrus jumped down from the upper railing, surprisingly lightly considering his height and the bulk of his armor. Shepard raised her hand in the gesture for comm silence, then waved Garrus to the other side of the door.

Shepard didn’t need to ask: Tali, flattened against the wall behind Garrus and thus well-covered, re-holstered her shotgun and got to work on her omnitool, scanning the hall beyond. Any one of them could do it, but Tali kept her omnitool’s sensors tuned to such a fine pitch that she could—as Joker put it—detect a mouse fart in a methane plant. After a minute, Tali said, “Clear, Shepard.”

“Go,” Shepard said, and—weapons at the ready, because extra caution cost nothing—they proceeded into the hallway.

“So _anyway,”_ Garrus continued, as though there had been no break in the conversation, _“_ we were having the chocolate, and Tali asked me if I knew what giving chocolate means in human culture.”

There was an expectant pause, interrupted only by the sound of their boots on the floor. Brilliantly, Shepard said, “Uh?”

“Specifically,” Tali said. “I asked if he knew what an unattached, adult man or woman giving chocolate to another unattached, adult man or woman, especially one they don’t already know well, means.”

Once she had untangled Tali’s syntax, Shepard said, “ _Oh._ ”

“Tali said it was a sign of romantic interest,” Garrus said, as though this was self-evidently ridiculous.

There was a pause.

“Yes…?” Shepard said.

Another pause. Tali started to laugh, the sound bright and clear even over the comm static.

“She was _right_?” Garrus sounded incredulous.

“Well, yes?” They’d reached a sealed door. Shepard signaled Tali to scan it while she hacked the mechanism. As she worked, she said, “Not always, Joker gave me a crunch bar last year and I’m pretty sure that just meant ‘congratulations on coming back from the dead,’ but a lot of the time, yes.”

“But Doctor Michel gave me that chocolate.” Now Garrus sounded both confused and plaintive.

“Garrus, Doctor Michel has had a crush on you for like three years now,” Shepard said patiently. The door finally gave up under her attentions, but she didn’t key it open yet; Tali was still checking her scan results. “It’s a rescue-response thing, happens all the time in the hero-ing business. I figured you’d know that by now.”

“But—”

“That’s what I _said_ ,” Tali said. “There’s three in the next room, Shepard.”

Shepard nodded. Garrus still looked plaintive, even as he took cover at the edge of the door, rifle at the ready.

“But—” Garrus said, and then Shepard keyed the door open and, at the same time, send a blast of biotic energy to knock the three brutes off their feet.

Tali didn’t bother with her combat drone. It was close enough that she could do damage enough with her shotgun, especially after Shepard slowed the brutes with a cryo-blast. “Garrus,” she said, during a brief lull, “honestly, if someone finds you attractive even across the species barrier, I think you should just take it as a compliment.”

Garrus was making his way along the edges of the room to get a good shot in with his rifle. “But if I missed that, which you two clearly thought was so obvious—thanks for letting me know, by the way—” he added, all sarcasm.

“Any time,” Shepard said.

“—then what else am I missing? What if I’m getting hit on by hanar every time I step on the Citadel and I don’t even know it?”

“So what if you are?” Shepard wanted to know. 

“Well, if Fornax is any judge, then I’m missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime.” Garrus punctuated the statement with a headshot to the last brute standing.

“I don’t know. I think I would prefer my partners to have more structure. Internal structure, external structure, I’m not picky, just structure.” Tali kept her shotgun in one hand, but checked her omnitool. “Room’s clear, Shepard.”

“Thanks,” Shepard said. “We’re almost through.”

“You should be pickier,” Garrus was saying as they entered the next—clear—hallway. “If external structure is okay, you could wind up with a rachni.”

“Ew,” Tali said. “No, that doesn’t fall under the exo versus endo distinction. That falls under the ‘no spiders or anything that look remotely like spiders’ rule. Next room’s clear too, Shepard.”

“Good rule.” Shepard keyed the door open.

“—Seriously, though,” Tali said. “This is what I was saying about keeping things at a distance? You miss a lot that way.”

“Says Miss Bloodthirsty,” Garrus said. They stepped out into the docking bay, eerily empty but—as Tali had confirmed—still clear.

“That’s Tali’Zorah vas Bloodthirsty to you,” Tali said.

Shepard grinned to herself as she signaled to Cortez for shuttle pickup. Yeah, sometimes, in the right place, with the right people, you could feel… if not invincible, then pretty close to.

* * *

And then there was Thessia.

Shepard stared at her console, willing her exhausted brain to make sense of the words on the screen, but every time she closed her eyes—even to blink—she could see Liara’s anguished, guilt-ridden face.

_See, Liara_ , she thought. _This is why I never wanted your admiration_. _I’m only a woman. I can’t live up to it._ She’d thought she’d killed that strain of hero-worship years before. She’d thought they could interact on an equal footing, ever since the thing with the old Shadow Broker, where Liara had criticized her driving and she’d criticized Liara’s hacking. But sometimes old habits died hard. No, some part of Liara had still kept her on a pedestal, until Shepard had fumbled. She’d seen it in her eyes: some part of Liara had expected Shepard to pull a victory out of her ass, right up until the end, when everything went to hell.

With long discipline, Shepard forced herself to stop. _Enough of that. Enough feeling sorry for yourself_. You couldn’t save every world. You couldn’t. Shepard knew that. With the odds as bad as they were, it was a wonder they hadn’t lost _more_. They’d fought back on Tuchanka, pulled off a miracle on Palaven, Sur’Kesh was still free, and Earth was holding out—badly, but still. Intellectually, she knew that it was a wonder they’d done as well as they had.

Intellectually.

She scrubbed a hand back through her hair, glad that these messages—at least—could be answered via mail, and didn’t require a transmission. She knew she looked like hell, and as long as it was just her alone with her console, she didn’t need to try to clean herself up, force the alert eyes and brave smile of the ever-vigilant Commander. The recipients didn’t have to know that she hadn’t showered and had weariness smudged beneath her eyes and dragging down the corners of her mouth.

She considered making coffee, and discarded the idea. Her stomach lining felt half-eaten-away already, and Chakwas was beginning to make noises about diet and rest. Considered stims, but she had to sleep _some_ tonight, because tomorrow was another mission. Considered a glass of brandy… but she had to be coherent for another five messages before she could turn in, and anyway, she was a little afraid of what would happen if she started drinking alone. It was hard enough to keep her emotions in check _sober_.

Her finger tapped restlessly on the desk. Focus. Yes. The faster she finished the messages, the sooner she could go to bed. She forced herself to read this one again, slowly, this time, as though somehow in the rereading the correct words would come to her fingers. It was from a Salarian medical officer, who was hedging about the availability of needed medical supplies; reading between the lines, Shepard could tell he was spooked by the fall of Thessia, and unwilling to give up any advantage.

(Well, who wasn’t spooked by the fall of Thessia? She’d heard Garrus and Tali talking quietly about it, seen the shock behind Traynor’s soft eyes when she’d heard, noticed the meaningful pause in Victus’ voice before he’d expressed his condolences to Liara. The asari were the oldest, the most advanced, the most powerful. If they could fall—)

Shepard shut down that line of thought as ruthlessly as she had shut down her self-pity. The luxury of falling apart wasn’t hers. She reread the message a third time, and this time let a little of her anger off the hook, to buoy her up. There would be hope and determination later; right now, if it took a little rage to get her energy up, she’d take it.

_You idiot_ , she typed. _As though Thessia fell for lack of medical supplies—as though the wealthiest, most powerful, most advanced race in the galaxy could have been saved if only they’d hung onto a bigger stock of medi-gel. You will stand with us (and for god’s sake, that means you_ stand with us _, and share your resources as well as accepting ours) or you will fall, and the Reapers will make puppets of your skin and bones and kill your children with them._

She stared at the message, and then—as she had known she would—selected the whole paragraph and hit Delete. Then, carefully, she wrote a new message, more temperate, more even-handed, appealing to the officer’s sense of pride and sense of justice, keeping the threat to a low note in the background.

She hit Send, rubbed her temples, and then scrolled to the next message. Only four more to go, and then she could sleep.

She tried not to think about the fifteen that would be waiting when she woke in the morning.

* * *

“…Keelah se’lai,” Tali said, raising her glass in a toast to the absent Miranda… and almost overbalancing straight off the bar stool in the process.

“Keelah se’lai,” Shepard agreed, toasting her back with her cup of water. She watched Tali wobble in her seat, trying without full success to get her balance back. “Maybe you ought to get down from there.”

“Nnnnnope,” Tali said. “I need to get to the bottom of the glass, remember, you said.”

“That was a metaphor, Tali,” Shepard said, watching Tali attempt to get the straw back in her sterile suit port again. “You haven’t been drunk very much before, have you?”

“Nope!” Tali said again. “We don’t drink much on the flotilla. One drink or two and never very, very….” She groped visibly for the word that had escaped her. “…strong,” she finished, with an air of triumph. “Because it’s not good for the immune system. They say. Most quarians use the Pilgrimage to get completely smashed on turian booze at least once, but I was being the diligent daughter.” She said the words ‘diligent daughter’ as though they were a vile insult, and accompanied them with wobbly finger-quotes. What was it with nonhumans and finger-quotes? “So I’m making up for—for—for lost time.”

Shepard considered her options. What she wanted to do was stay with Tali until she was ready to go to bed and then get her safely _to_ bed, like a good friend. What she needed to do was go over the supply manifests, because they’d be docking for resupply in a few hours, and delay (or worse, failure to supply some critical component) could cost lives.

“Don’t wander off,” she finally told Tali. Tali nodded agreeably.

It wasn’t far from Port Observation to the Main Battery, and sure enough, even at this late hour, Garrus was up and fiddling with the weapon systems.

“Hey, got a minute?”

“Sure,” Garrus said. “I was just about to finish for the night anyway. What’s up?”

“Just out of curiosity, you didn’t happen to have a bottle of brandy hanging around, did you?”

“Yeah? So?”

“Verelak’s Special? Bottle about yea big?” Shepard held her hands up about six inches apart.

“Yes?” Garrus leaned back against the console and gave her a wry look. “Is there a point to this, or are you demonstrating your newly-acquired, alcohol-related mind reading trick?”

“Ha. No. But I don’t think you have it anymore.” At Garrus’ raised-eyeplates expression, she elaborated: “Tali’s in Port Observation getting quite drunk off what looks like your brandy.” 

Garrus rolled his eyes, but didn’t look too annoyed. “Of course she is,” he said, half-irritated and half-fond. “It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.”

Shepard smiled. “Anyway, she’s not sick or anything, but I think she’s about to fall off her bar stool. And I don’t think she’s very experienced with getting drunk. Could you stick your head in and keep an eye on her, make sure she gets to bed okay? I wish I could do it, but I desperately need to go over the supply manifests and see if we need to pick up something else before we hit our next target.”

“Sure thing, Shepard,” Garrus said. “Just let me shut down and I’ll make sure she doesn’t get into too much trouble.”

Shepard debated going up to her room, but the thought of logging in to her console made her feel exhausted. The crew area was quiet this time of night (well, ‘night’) anyway, with all but a skeleton crew asleep and the lights dimmed in the mess. So she snagged a pair of datapads and booted them up, loading the recommended supply list—with the crew’s suggestions and addendums noted—on one, and the current supply manifest on the other. With a cup of coffee and the mess table to herself, it’d work as well as her desk in her quarters, and without alarming messages distracting her by pinging in all the time.

A few minutes later, Garrus emerged from the main battery and made his way down to Port Observation. She heard the doors swish open, and Garrus’ voice saying, “Tali—whoa, hey, you’re about to fall over and crack your helmet.” Then, flanging with amusement, “That’d be a really embarrassing way to get a suit breach. What would the other admirals think?”

“M’not going to—” Tali said with the indignation of the sloshed, and then the door slid shut, cutting off her words. Shepard forced herself to stop perking her ears for more hints of conversation, turning resolutely back to her datapad.

It was about fifteen minutes after that when the Port Observation door whooshed open again. She could hear Tali giggling, and Garrus saying, “You are heavier than you look.” And then the shuffling sounds of one person walking and one person stumbling.

“S’not a nice thing to say to a person,” Tali said.

“I didn’t mean it that way, it’s just you look like you ought to weigh nothing and you definitely weigh _something._ Ow. When you turn your head like that the edge of your helmet whacks me right in the mandible.”

“Sorry.”

“Ow! Yeah, like that, don’t do that again.” A heavy, two-toned, mock-martyred sigh.

“Sorry!”

“You,” Garrus said, “are lucky I’m such a nice guy.” They circled around the edge of the hallway—Garrus tossed her a wave with his free hand; Tali was oblivious, upright but leaning heavily against his side (and, yes, perfectly positioned to bang him in the face whenever she turned her head). Then they disappeared from sight again, into the elevator alcove, and Shepard heard the beep of a summoned elevator.

“You _are_ a nice guy,” Tali said, earnest and a little slurred.

“Especially since you stole all my booze and didn’t save me any. And then you _filtered_ it. That was good brandy, too.”

“And you’re pretty cute, too.”

A pause. Shepard felt the old familiar knot in her gut. She drew a deep, deep breath, and forced herself to relax, telling her stomach to settle down.

“I’ll believe that,” Garrus said, “if you say it again sober.”

“S’true!”

“’Cute’ has never been an appropriate description for turians, especially not turians who stop rockets with their faces.”

“Well,” Tali said after a thoughtful pause, “then you’re tall, dark, annnnnnd… spiky.”

“I’m going to find you someplace safe to pass out before you decide to call Wrex up and hit on him,” Garrus said, and then the elevator beeped and there was another bout of shuffling and then the crew level sank into silence again.

Shepard pressed her hand against her belly and wondered why that particular thread of anxiety had decided to make itself known _now_. She dragged the datapad closer and made herself pay attention to it, cross-referencing the inventory with the recommended supply list.

Ten minutes after that, her omnitool beeped. She opened it up to the messages section, where a notification from Garrus blinked at her.

gvakarian: T’s in bed.

She dragged open the virtual keyboard with a fingertip and replied.

jshepard: Thanks, G.

A moment later, another ping.

gvakarian: Did you know she still sleeps in that supply closet off the drive core room?

jshepard: I keep offering her a real bunk, but she says that a room to herself with a door that locks is a luxury.

jshepard: And I think she likes being close to the engines.

gvakarian: I guess after the flotilla that makes sense. On both counts.

gvakarian: Engineer Daniels promised to make sure she has water and a painkiller when she wakes up tomorrow. I can’t be too upset about the brandy, she’s going to have the mother of all hangovers to show for it tomorrow.

gvakarian: Unless quarians don’t get hangovers? That’d be unfair.

jshepard: Pretty sure everyone gets hangovers. Galactic universal.

gvakarian: Then I will get my own back by mocking her relentlessly.

jshepard: Seems fair.

jshepard: I appreciate your helping.

gvakarian: Any time.

gvakarian: Need anything else?

Shepard paused, tapping her finger on the table. Then she replied.

jshepard: I’m fine. Get some sleep.

Was it her imagination, or was there a slightly longer pause before his next message?

gvakarian: Night, Commander.

* * *

The mission _should_ have gone smoothly.

It started out normally for what Shepard thought of as her ‘pry-Cerberus’-fingers-off-the-cookie-jar’ missions. She’d brought Ashley and Vega for their firepower; for all the increasingly-wild stories she knew were spreading about her (thank you, Joker), the truth was that Shepard was better suited to a support role. Her skills were at their most effective when she was backing up someone who could pack a wallop.

(And that was, actually, her general approach to the war. She couldn’t take down the Reapers on her own. What she could do was corral as many people—and species—as possible, get them all pointed in the same direction, and make sure they had what they needed to fight.)

It wasn’t even particularly difficult as a take-down-Cerberus mission went, either. She was running through her biotic energy at a faster rate than she would have liked, but nothing she couldn’t handle, and it wasn’t a bad rate of biotic burnthrough. They were almost done, one more warehouse room to clear out.

“Biotics getting low,” she warned them over the comm.

“Roger that, skipper,” Ashley replied, professional as always.

Vega was… well, Vega, as always. “Don’t worry ‘bout it, Lola, we’ve got this covered,” he said.

And it seemed that they did: Ash took up a post picking off the last wave of Cerberus ground troops with her rifle, while Vega got in close and personal the way he was good at—and both of them together kept the troops off her back so she could find a position at the midrange, the better to back them up with cryo and armor overload. The only difficulty was in the size of the room. Like a lot of spaceport warehouses, it was an enormous cavern with two sliding powerdoors that could subdivide it into three sections, but currently all three doors were up. Lots of room for troops to hide, lots of territory to cover when mopping up.

A faint blur caught her eye, almost imperceptible, here-and-gone as the shimmer on asphalt on a hot day. “Got a phantom moving in,” she warned the other two, “keep your scanners up and watch out.” And then, silently, she thanked Kasumi; were it not for time sparring with her—and even more time on missions with her—she probably wouldn’t have been so attuned to the telltale distortions of a cloak. Fortunately, if you knew what you were looking for, you could key your scanners to look for the power signature that even the really advanced cloaks gave off.

There. A wavering ball of energy sprang into focus on her HUD. She sidled to the west edge of the warehouse, staying close but not too close to the cloaked Cerberus phantom. Just a little closer and she could surprise them by overloading and hopefully take down the cloak, at least temporarily.

With an earsplitting screech, one of the warehouse’s powerdoors slammed shut, so fast and close that she could feel the wind of it even through her armor. Leaving Ash and Vega on one side, and Shepard—and the cloaked operative—on the other.

_Shit,_ Shepard thought, but she didn’t let it slow her down. She’d let the phantom lure her away as she’d tried to get into range for an overload, and that was stupid (god, she must not be getting enough _sleep_ ), but at least now she was in range for that overload. She took cover, then fired off the overload, watching for the blaze of brilliant white that would mean she’d hit her target.

Bingo! And when the phosphorus glare of the overload cleared, she got her first good look at her assailant.

A close-range fighter, fast and dextrous and armed with state-of-the-art blades that could get through even her upgraded power armor. Her heart beat in her throat. This must have been planned; the Illusive Man knew her skills well enough to know that she was almost unstoppable with her squad… but vulnerable without. And especially vulnerable at short range, against a melee fighter.

_Should’ve kept a better eye on those doors,_ she told herself. Well, too late now. 

“Vega, Ash,” she said low into her comm, keeping an eye on the phantom and moving to keep out of his way. “See if you can blow the door back open.” She took aim and fired off a blast of cryo; the phantom duck-and-rolled and so was just clipped by the blast. Damn it, she _knew_ how to deal with these sneaky bastards, but her tactics relied on backup—if the phantom was trying to evade her tech _and_ cover fire, one of them could get a hit in….

The phantom kept rolling, came up under cover. Shepard waited, crouched and ready, for some sign of movement—a head, an elbow, anything she could aim at; bullets would work if tech and biotics failed—and said again, “Ash, Vega, do you copy?”

Nothing. And she realized with a start that she wasn’t hearing the usual hissy crackle of silence on the comm. The feed was silent, empty.

Someone—the phantom, one of his allies?—had done something to block it. Which meant she wasn’t just physically cut off, she couldn’t even communicate with her team. Shepard’s unease bloomed into full worry; she pushed it back. She’d have to finish this fast and decisive.

It was really too close quarters for a grenade, but she lobbed one anyway, then braced herself. The explosion’s backdraft swept her, driving the crate she’d been using for cover into her knees and roaring tangibly over her armor. Her tech armor controls flashed a warning: running at 60% effectiveness.

And out of the corner of her eye, visible against the smoke, she could see the distortion of the phantom—cloaked again—launching itself out of the path of the blast. And right into her path.

She bought herself a few seconds by summoning up the very last of her biotic strength into a push that shoved the phantom back, shot off another overload—

—and then the phantom was leaping again, visible now in Cerberus black and white, smoky from the blast but moving without apparent injury, damn, damn, _damn_ — 

The phantom landed in front of her and she brought up her gun at the same moment. His barrier was enough to deflect her first shot. Before she could get a second, the phantom’s foot moved; that was all she saw before it connected hard with the underside of her jaw, snapping her head back. 

Pain stabbed the back of her neck in a way that made her glad for the spine-guard upgrades on her helmet and neckpiece connector. Her back teeth caught her tongue and blood filled her mouth, salty and nauseating. 

She staggered back, gagging at the pain where his foot had driven the neckguard of her helmet back into her throat—and as she staggered, her attacker drove his blade toward the joint between the waistpiece and chestpiece of her armor. She felt something go _wrong_ low in her torso, felt pain spike and then immediately shift to a dull glowing throb. Broken rib? Torn ligament? 

Shepard struggled to catch her breath; her flickering tech armor—which, she realized dimly, had kept the knife from actually sliding _between_ her ribs and finishing her—hissed and went out.

She reared back away from the next stab, lost her balance, and stumbled backwards into a pile of crates. The fall jolted her gun from her hand. The phantom advanced, and everything seemed to move so _slowly_ , as though she was encased in thick honey; she scrambled for her weapon with one hand, tried to reactivate her tech armor with the other—and the phantom advanced. She wondered dimly what reward the Illusive Man would give whoever brought back her head.

The knife glittered along its monomolecular edge. Her tech armor was still booting, having crashed hard from its last fail; without it there’d be nothing to blunt the blade’s passage, it would would go right through her. Was _going_ to go right through her. Her biotics were spent, the place inside her where power usually bubbled was drained empty. She’d have to eat half her own bodyweight to make up for what she’d burned through today—and then she realized, with an edge of hysteria, that no, she wouldn’t, because she’d be dead, you didn’t need to eat anything if you were dead. She couldn’t get a good breath, pain throbbing through her torso.

Her squad was on the other side of the door, and she was alone, and she was going to die.

( _—black empty space and silence, nothing to hear but the hot fast flutter of her own breath and her heart drumming in her ears, and she’d wondered crazily as she struggled for breath whether it would be asphyxiation that finished her first, or the icy cold she could feel creeping in through her failing armor, or maybe the opposite, maybe the starfall burn as she pass through atmo—)_

Fury boiled through her, forcing her up off the ground in a movement she would later not be able to remember making, as she caught the phantom’s fast-descending hand by the wrist. _No_. His other hand snapped out instantly to pry her grip free—and she caught it with her other hand. _No_. _No._

_I am not…_

She didn’t know whether it was some remnant of her biotic power, spurred back to life by her rage and terror—or maybe just pure berserker power—that gave her the strength to force him back as she got to her knees. 

… _going to die_ …

She didn’t split her attention even enough to give another try to reactivating her tech armor. She felt as if she was sparking, but maybe that was just the random lights of pain and lack of air, her brain misfiring. She pressed, twisting and crushing the phantom’s captured wrists with her gauntleted hands.

_…all alone…_

Brute force had never been her thing, she’d always preferred the elegance of biotics and the complicated machinery of tech attacks. But the animal terror that had spread wings inside her knew what to do, and when the ever-silent phantom finally cried out in pain loosened his fingers— 

_…not again!_

—she caught the knife and drove it, hard and artlessly, into his chest.

The phantom stumbled back and fell sideways, and at the same time whatever sheer self-preservational energy had possessed Shepard vanished. The primal rage and fear she’d felt passed through her and away, leaving only an echo. _I am not going to die all alone again. No. No._

She crumpled back to her knees, trying to breathe hard and failing because each deep inhalation made her ribs scream, and even the passage of air through her abused throat grated.

The dying phantom grabbed for one of the crates, slipped, and fell in a pool of his own blood, but his flailing reach pulled the empty storage containers loose. One fell across Shepard’s path, blocking her in (and half-under) the crates. She laid her head down on the cold floor, felt cement gritting along the outside of her helmet, and tried to concentrate on breathing.

It was just a few minutes later that the powerdoor squealed open. She could hear Vega saying, “Lola!” and she tried to call out to let him know where she was, but all she could manage was a hoarse, wheezy noise.

“Lola,” Vega repeated, and the crate that had blocked her pulled away. “You okay, Commander?” he asked, worry plain on his face. And in the fact that he’d called her ‘Commander.’

"I'm okay," she said. Croaked. Whatever. She took his hand and let him pull her up, then bent over, jerked up the front of her helmet, and spat a mouthful of blood on the cement floor.

“That doesn’t look very okay, no offense,” Vega said.

“Bit my tongue,” she said shortly. “And bruised some ribs, I think, but I’m still walking.” Ash appeared just then—she must’ve been farther away—at a jog that dropped to a walk when she saw Shepard on her feet.

“Good,” Vega said. She must not’ve convinced him, not really—or maybe it was the careful way she was holding herself—because he looped an arm around her back for support. She wasn’t too proud to take the help, either. “Williams just about shit a brick when we realized we’d been cut off.” Shepard recognized the marine machismo, Vega unwilling to admit that he’d been scared too.

“Fuck off,” Ash said to Vega, but amiably. Shepard managed a grin, which must’ve looked really macabre—she knew she still had blood on her mouth, could feel it there. 

“Hey, you still took out that third wave—I give credit where it’s due.”

“I’m still waiting to see what kind of awful nickname you decide on for me. Although I’m not sure I want to know, actually.”

“You were the one who didn’t like ‘Boomstick.’ I thought that worked pretty good.”

Ash rolled her eyes, then asked Shepard, “You alright, Skipper?” Shepard didn’t fail to notice the way the moment of byplay had quietly given her time to catch her breath.

“Nothing the armor can’t handle,” Shepard said. She could already feel her armor’s internal omnigel system sending cooling relief to her battered ribs, her aching throat, and her smartweave tightening up across her torso to give support to her sides. “He got in a few good hits before I took him out.”

Ashley craned her neck far enough to see the fallen phantom, skewered on his own blade and in a pool of his own blood, and then whistled. “Nice work,” she said. “Didn’t know you had experience with hand-to-hand.”

“I don’t,” Shepard said. “I saw an opportunity and I took it.” No need to tell them how close it had gotten, how desperate she’d been in that moment, breath and heart and mind both screaming denial to the void— 

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

* * *

Cleaning her armor was something Shepard knew she ought to delegate. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have plenty to do, after all.

But there was something about it—something about taking care of it herself, especially after a mission that had gone awry, that grounded her. It was her armor and so in some way her responsibility, and being able to go after the grime and scorchmarks herself, polish it back to its usual dark green luster, served to put _her_ back in order too.

She sat down with the pieces and her polishing cloth and got to work.

It was funny how close she’d come to dying, and how little it showed on her armor. The force of the phantom’s blow had strained her ribs, but her tech armor had absorbed most of it; there wasn’t even a chip to show for it at the seam where the chestpiece met the waist. The kick to her head had scuffed up her helmet and neckguard, but that was it. And yet she’d been so close to being skewered and bleeding out on a warehouse floor in the middle of nowhere….

The last desperate grenade she’d launched had left sooty marks all along her shoulderpiece. She went to work on those, carefully scrubbing away the marks, and some of her polish wax along with it. She’d have to rewax when she was done.

Joker had asked her, the year before, if she could remember being dead. "Just for scientific inquiry, you know," he said. "How often do you get a chance to ask someone that?" And she'd replied honestly: no, she couldn't. She'd had some dreams before waking up in Miranda's lab, but she was pretty sure they were just that—dreams, phantoms created by her reconstructed brain during the last stages of the Lazarus Project before they'd woken her up. They were the same mix of mundane and peculiar as any normal sleeping dream, so she had no reason to believe that they were any kind of vision of the beyond. She couldn’t remember being dead.

What she hadn’t told him—what she didn’t tell anyone—was that she could remember _dying_.

There had been a point, as she’d spun out into space with only her own rattling breath to hear and the darkness pressing in from all sides—there had been a point when she’d realized she wasn’t going to make it. When she’d known that there would be no last-minute rescue, no clever solution that she could summon from nowhere. This was it.

And she’d felt a lot of things—fear, yes, and rage; she hadn’t met her death with equanimity but with a feeling that it wasn’t _time_ yet, that there was still too much to do.

But mostly what she’d felt, as the air hissed out of her armor and the endless night slithered in to replace it, was very cold. The chill of spaces crept through her armor and sank its fingers straight down to her bones, and she was frozen and all alone, a hundred thousand stars to bear witness to her passing but none of them _caring_ , and no voice but her own catching and sobbing on a broken breath before the cold and the dark brought oblivion.

And then, against all odds, she’d woken again. But sometimes it felt like the cold had never quite lost its grip. The best she could do was not think about it, which she was pretty good at most of the time.

She realized she’d been polishing the same piece, over and over, and put it down before she wore a hole in it. She carefully stored the armor pieces in her armor locker, threw on a sweatshirt and pants over her smartweave, and went out. The crew was good at keeping her from brooding.

And it was no surprise that her feet took her automatically down to Engineering. She started on the lowest decks most days when doing a circuit of the ship, because it made sense to go bottom-to-top, but it was also a habit to seek Tali out when she was having a rotten day. It was hard for a day to seem _too_ rotten with Tali around—even if all she had to talk about was what a bosh’tet the engine was being.

“…that’s right,” Tali was saying. “I remember you chastising me on behalf of my species, for losing my homeworld to the geth.”

“I never said that.” Garrus’ voice, a little distant where it piped over the ship comm system.

“Would you like me to send you an audio recording?”

“No, I hate listening to recordings of myself. My voice never comes out right.”

“Hmm,” Tali said, skepticism heavy in her voice, leaning on one hand against the console. Shepard paused, unsure where this conversation was going, unwilling to interrupt.

“Listen,” Garrus said, “about what I said—”

“Forget it,” Tali said, wearily, rolling her weight back onto her heels.

“No.” Even thinned out over the comm, there was a certain forcefulness to Garrus’ voice. “I was wrong. I was young, and… I was wrong about your people.”

Tali went quite still.

“Oh,” Garrus continued, his voice softer, tones rounding out around the edges. “And about you.”

“Oh,” Tali said, her voice a little higher and almost shy, a shyness that Shepard knew was part of her character but that showed itself so rarely these days. “Thanks.”

And very suddenly Shepard realized that she was eavesdropping, and worse, eavesdropping not on Vega and Garrus talking smack about each other but on something genuinely personal, and as silently as she could, she turned and went back out and up. She’d stop by Engineering again later, she told herself.

* * *

So when she caught them two weeks later, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But she wasn’t used to thinking… like that, wasn’t used to thinking about people that way—was used to doing her damnedest to _not_ think of it.

So when she went down to see Garrus, she wasn’t expecting anything unusual. The door to the Main Battery hissed open, and there was Garrus—and Tali—and _oh._

Garrus’ hand was on Tali’s waist and she knew enough about turians to know that that was _not_ a platonic touch—no more than Tali’s hand spread wide across the plates of his chest was something casual. And they stood so close that Tali was almost inside the curve of his body, so close they were almost touching and yet still leaning in toward each other as if the space between their bodies had a gravitational pull. His forehead rested against the upper curve of her helmet, eye to eye and what would have been breath to breath if not for her mask. And in the split second before they noticed her she saw the way Tali’s head was tilted a little, playful, questioning, and she saw too the soft way Garrus was looking back at Tali.

She took it all in in a second, less than a second, and with an almost audible click the pieces came together. _Oh_. And then: _Of course. Of course. How did I not see it?_

Tali and Garrus sprang apart at her entrance—sprang apart, and yet she noticed the way Garrus’ hand lingered on Tali’s forearm even still. It made sense, it made so much sense it felt almost inevitable; she could read a crowd or sway a politician, so how was it that she hadn’t this right in front of her?

Shepard felt ice all down her throat.

“Oh!” Tali said, and then glanced at Garrus, who picked up the thread.

“We were just, uh…” he began.

“I, well, I just came to say goodbye, and….”

It hurt. It _hurt_. That came as a surprise, too, almost as much so as finding them together, and she tried to swallow it down and found that she couldn’t. It felt like something had lodged in her throat, huge and spiky, and for a moment she couldn’t speak.

They were speaking, though, spinning some ridiculous face-saving story that she would have found hilarious in another mood, another situation, another lifetime. “…think one of my mandibles got hooked on her helmet.”

“It might’ve caused a rupture, so I asked him to check.”

“You know, because of infection. Didn’t want to jeopardize the mission….”

A pause. Tali fidgeted, a far cry from the happy, relaxed way she’d stood just a moment before—just a moment before, tucked up against Garrus. “So…” she said.

“Yeah,” Garrus finished, and Shepard realized they were waiting for her to say something. She swallowed again, and this time the ice was enough to numb the aching thickness of her throat.

Numb enough that she could say, calmly and even with the appearance of cheerfulness, “I’m really happy for you. Both of you.”

Because she was, oh god. They were both—she l—they were her best friends, she wanted nothing more than for them to be happy. It was stupid, stupid, _stupid_ , the envy and the grief that never quite went away no matter how hard she worked or how long she waited. It was so stupid. They would be good for each other and she wanted that for them, wanted it so badly, if anyone deserved to be happy it was them—

Tali’s posture relaxed visibly. Garrus’s mandibles, drawn tight close in concern, loosened. “Thanks, Shepard,” Tali said, warm and grateful and oh, Shepard’s throat hurt from clenching and she didn’t even know what she was trying to hold in so hard.

“Appreciate it,” Garrus said. “Guess it helps to have something to come back to.”

She smiled. How could she not? They were her closest friends and she could see the affection between them—not just now, but stretching back weeks, months, maybe years. She smiled and she meant it and still she felt the ice all down her spine, the sting and the numbness.

And she could _hear_ the playful affection, the flirtation in Tali’s voice as she said, “What do you mean, ‘to come back to’? This is just a fling, Vakarian. I’m using you for your body.”

“You’re so mean,” Garrus replied, and then his voice dropped in a way fit to make a strong woman’s knees weak, “…and I’m okay with that.”

She was proud of herself that she could say, light and even-voiced, “I’d tell you to get a room, but it looks like you already have.” Tali laughed, embarrassed, and Garrus grinned his wide-mandibled grin, sharp-toothed and cocky. And happy. They both looked so happy.

She didn’t bother with the rest of her rounds. And though she squeezed her eyes shut as she rode up to the Loft, she was also proud of herself that even in the privacy of the elevator, she kept her features impassive as a mask.

* * *

Shepard sank into her chair, ignored the blinking of her terminal to bury her head in her arms.

The worst of it was there was no one to blame but herself. She was the one who’d fallen in love—

_(—with whom? With which of them? With both of them, of course, because if she was going to have impossible greedy desires apparently she was going to go all out, not just fall for her best friend but fall for both her her best friends—)_

—despite having promised herself that she wasn’t going to _do_ that anymore. She was the one who’d pushed everyone away, deliberately, who had on purpose held everyone at arm’s length. She was the one who’d prioritized her duty, and of course she had, because if you had to choose between your own selfish desires and the fate of all sentient life in the galaxy, what choice was that?

(But that was a lie, and she knew it. She’d begun keeping everyone at a safe distance long before she’d ever heard the name Reapers. She’d encouraged everyone else to have a life, despite everything; she’d gone to great lengths to save Miranda’s sister and Mordin’s conscience. It was an easy and convenient lie but it was a lie. She’d held everyone away not because it was right but because she was— _afraid_ —)

Her fingers dug through her hair and flexed, tugging her the strands tight and hard against her scalp. She relaxed them slowly and deliberately.

And they were a good match, she knew it so well: Garrus confident and and smart and cynical and prone to self-doubt, Tali brilliant and snarky and sweet and so demanding of herself. They could fit together so beautifully, like a jigsaw puzzle.

If they fitted together so well, there was no place for her.

But that had been her choice, right?

She dragged her head out of her arms, forced herself to get up. She filled the little electric kettle with water, movements long since made automatic through repetition, and set it to boil. Then she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until she saw flashes of white.

She’d chosen this, she’d stayed away even when they’d invited her closer (Garrus’ unreadable expression with his hand holding the elevator door and giving her a chance to change her mind; Tali leaning into her, warm and laughing). How could she be angry at them for finding each other instead of her when she’d done everything in her power to lose them?

She had been fleeing the fact—she who never fled anything she could fight had been _fleeing_ the fact that she loved them. Loved them both, so that it was impossible to be jealous of either of them.

Impossible to be angry at either of them. Angry for what? That they were not alone when she was—when _she_ was the one who had caused her own isolation?

Impossible, too, not to remember the electricity between them. The way they’d leaned into each other even though they were already so close, as though they couldn’t not.

Impossible not to imagine the strength of Garrus’ arm sliding around her waist, the warmth of his breath tangible on her skin, the prickle of his claws and the vibration of his voice rumbling between them, leashed power and a confident touch and the humor in his blue eyes wry and dry and gentle all at once.

Impossible not to think of Tali pressed against her, soft and welcoming and by turns hesitant and bold, the suppleness of her curves and the surprising liquid way she moved, the throaty sound of her voice and the phosphorous brilliance of her eyes and her tone by turns teasing and sharp and yet never fully able to hide the inherent sweetness of her nature.

She realized that the kettle had boiled and then shut itself off. She couldn’t remember what she’d intended to make with it. Blindly she grabbed a packet of tea.

And it was invasive, inevitably—invasive and inappropriate in the extreme—to think of them together, Garrus’ sharp edges and heartstopping care, and Tali softness and fire, the low thrum of his voice and the mystery of what was beneath her suit.

It wasn’t that she wanted to break them up. They were her best friends and she loved them, _loved_ them, both of them. But she wanted—she realized with an ache that grew, a hollowness that seemed far larger than her body could contain—she wanted to be there with them. She didn’t want to be left out. She didn’t want to be alone anymore.

_(—cold and alone in the dark with the stars burning impersonal and forever away, and her breath coming high and sharp as asphyxiation or panic crushed her chest, and no one and nothing there with her against the endless night—)_

Not anymore.

But it was too late, wasn’t it. She’d had her chance, they’d held the door open again and again, and maybe if—maybe if she’d accepted it then, maybe— 

But it was too late now.

The steam from her mug curled up, and she stared through it, unseeing. She didn’t cry. She didn’t every cry, not anymore. But her eyes felt gritty, as though her tears had been replaced by arid sand.

* * *

She got through the next day the way she had gotten through so many things: determination and rigid control. She had fought bitter battles and sent men her their deaths; she could deal with this. And it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of things to distract herself with, between briefings with Hackett and coordinating with the leaders of all the allied worlds. And the endless, desperate, hopeless scroll of worlds falling, fallen, lost.

The world was going to come to a goddamn end unless she was successful. Her romantic woes could take a backseat.

So she did a good job of keeping herself focused until the end of the day, and it seemed plausible that she could coast on her exhaustion, go from full-tilt running to unconscious in bed without too much time to ruminate in between. 

In point of fact, she’d succeeded in running herself so close to the edge of exhaustion that she was deciding whether she had the energy for a shower or just wanted to strip and fall into bed… when the door chimed.

She stared briefly at the ceiling. If there was a higher power, she didn’t believe it could be meaningfully petitioned, but still she sent up a plea of _oh god, just ten minutes’ peace, please_ before she asked aloud, “EDI, who is it?”

“Tali’Zorah is at the door,” EDI said, in her smooth soothing tone.

She scrubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her hands, trying to wipe away the sore, gritty feeling in them. 

Her day had been so busy that she hadn’t seen Garrus _or_ Tali. Which was a little abnormal. It was not uncommon that she’d go a day without seeing one of her squadmates—but Garrus and Tali she generally sought out.

She could send Tali away, make some excuse—but she was going to have to face them sometime. Maybe it was better now, like this, and not in front of the crew. If she cracked or slipped a little there would be fewer people around to see it, fewer people for whom the facade was ruined.

“Send her in,” she said, and the door slid open.

“I’m sorry to bother you this late,” Tali said, entering with datapad in hand, “but I have the numbers on the shield upgrades and you said you wanted them as soon as they came in.”

“Thanks, Tali,” Shepard reached for the datapad. Tali handed it over, but her hand lingered on it a moment too long, the pad briefly a bridge between them before she let go.

“Are you all right?” Tali asked.

_Damn_. “I’m fine.” A beat. “What makes you ask?”

“You just look a little—worn thin.” Tali’s voice lilted up at the end, into a concerned question. “Is there anything you need? I know you’ve been really overworked--"

Shepard realized very suddenly that she had made a big mistake in letting Tali in, because beneath everything Tali was essentially a good person. And she could bear up in the face of brutality and isolation, savagery and cynicism, depression and pain. But she was weak to kindness; kindness could break her.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, and heard her voice waver, goddamn it.

And there were very few people in the world who knew her well enough to recognize that tremor but unfortunately, one of those that _did_ was right in front of her. “Shepard,” Tali said, “what—”

“—I—” Shepard began, and then stopped, because if she said one more word she thought she would—something. Scream, burst into tears, something. Crack open like an egg. She drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyelids.

And the next thing she knew, Tali’s arms were around her, warm and surprisingly strong. “Shepard,” she was saying. “I’m so sorry.”

Shepard blinked and blinked again, trying to fight back the tears burning beneath her eyelids, trying to force the wellspring of fear and sadness back under her control. But Tali’s fingers rubbed gently between her shoulder blades and even through the suit Tali was so _warm_ , and suddenly it was hard, impossibly hard to force it all down. Her grief slipped its chain and to her horror, a sob escaped her—almost not a sob at all, but a creaky shuddering noise on her indrawn breath, like the sound of a long-neglected door opening. She pressed her forehead against Tali’s shoulder to hide the first splash of tears from her stinging eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked.

“Hey,” Tali said, her voice soft and worried, “it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she said. “It’s really not, Tali.” Her voice shook. She had to keep going forward, she had to keep _moving_ , she couldn’t stop for comfort or she’d fall apart. Without her momentum she knew she was likely to stumble and not get up again.

(She should have been strong enough to pull away on her own, but she just wasn’t. Despite her words her arms had crept of their own volition around Tali, fingers curled around the alien shape of her back, alien and yet so familiar. When had she last been touched beyond a clap on the shoulder or a hand on her arm, or to apply medigel to a wound?)

“I seem to remember,” Tali said gently, “crying on your shoulder once. Was that something I should have been ashamed of?”

Shepard squeezed her eyes tight shut, gasped until she could get her breathing back under control. “Tali, that’s hardly the same thing. Your father had just died.”

“It’s exactly the same thing. I needed to know I wasn’t alone.”

Shepard shivered, and knew Tali could feel it, and swallowed past a lump of sour fire in her throat. _Tali, you have no idea_ , she thought. With a great effort she pulled away. “It’s not fair for me to ask—”

“You didn’t ask. I came up here of my own free will.”

Shepard’s throat tightened, her heart ached. “Tali, I like you.” Tali put her head to one side and waited. “I like you… more… than I should, as your commanding officer. You and Garrus both. I like you in a way that’s not appropriate if I’m going to be giving you orders.” She wished to hell she could see Tali’s face; she was standing very still, her glowing eyes level and unblinking, and Shepard couldn’t read her at all. She looked away. “So it would be taking advantage for me to—to—it would be taking advantage.” A pause. “And I know you and Garrus—”

There was a long, sick, shaky silence. Shepard pressed her eyes shut and felt tears squeeze out of the corners, hot and shameful down the sides of her face.

“Shepard,” Tali said softly. “Garrus is crazy about you.” Shepard hadn’t opened her eyes, so she jumped when Tali’s hand landed, gentle and warm, on her upper arm. “And so am I.”

For a moment, Shepard wasn’t sure she’d heard right. Surely she hadn’t heard right. But Tali’s hand was as warm and real as anything, settled lightly on her upper arm, and though Shepard still couldn’t read her face she could at least meet her eyes. Finally she said, “…What?”

Tali nodded. “We had a talk about it. Pretty early on.” And then, with a smile in her voice: “It was kind of funny, actually, I’m pretty sure Garrus was afraid he was going to offend me terribly telling me he was still, what’s the phrase, carrying a torch for you. I had to interrupt him three times before he stopped talking long enough for me to say I felt the same way.” She let her hand fall away from Shepard’s arm, and said, quietly, “I’ve always thought you could… care a great deal for more than one person at a time, though. Garrus is—wonderful,” and then her voice softened into a smile, “although I’m not sure you should repeat that, he’s getting pretty cocky already. But I think I’ve been a little in love with you ever since you saved me that first time. And it didn’t exactly go away.”

Shepard’s tongue had stuck itself to the top of her mouth with shock, and she had to unstick it to speak. “I had no idea.” That was an understatement. She felt suddenly unmoored, all the assumptions she’d been standing on suddenly gone, and she couldn’t tell yet if she was going to fall or fly.

And now Tali looked embarrassed, the way her spine curved in just a little. “I didn’t think we were hiding it all that well, either of us. I know Garrus sought you out all the time.” She hesitated. “But we just assumed you… weren’t interested. You never showed an interest in, well, in anyone. Certainly not us. Not that way, anyway.”

“I didn’t want you to know.” She’d denied it even to herself, though she didn’t tell Tali that, had denied it so thoroughly even though now, looking back, she could see all the little ways she’d been falling in love with them too over the past year. “It wasn’t—it wouldn’t have been appropriate, it wouldn’t have been professional.” 

“Because you’re the commander.”

“Because I’m the commander,” Shepard agreed, and then, because she had to be honest now if she was ever going to be honest again, “…but also because I haven’t had the best luck with romance.” God, how embarrassing, that she could talk or fight her way out of almost any situation, but bring up something so personal and suddenly she was stammering. That was why she’d avoided it for so long: she hated to be so far out of her depth. “I didn’t want to ruin what I had reaching for more.”

Tali was quiet for a long moment, her fingers twining one over the other, and Shepard wanted so badly to reach out, still them, rub the backs of her hands and twine her own fingers there. Finally Tali said, “If you want, we can pretend this conversation never happened.” And Shepard’s stomach _lurched._ But Tali went on, “That’s not… what I’d rather, though. I’m pretty sure that Garrus wouldn’t want that either.”

“No,” Shepard said, through the thickness in her throat. “No. No, that’s not what I—no.”

And Tali relaxed so beautifully, like a flower opening up after the rain. “Good,” she said. “Then we should talk about it. All three of us.”

* * *

It was so strange to actually _talk_ about it, like adults. When she’d been younger, Shepard had never really done that. She’d fallen into bed with people without talking about it, flings and liaisons that she sometimes regretted and sometimes didn’t, but that never lasted. They’d been like the weather, coming and going in her life, and it wouldn’t have occurred to her to _talk_ about it. 

And then later, in the one serious relationship of her life, they hadn’t talked either. Hadn’t talked until the issues had blown up to the point of a screaming fight, hadn’t talked about it all the way to the end when it had ended so painfully, so badly, so irrevocably that she had decided to hell with it all, that she’d have friends—she was good at friends—but not lovers.

This time they were going to talk about it, and the idea scared the hell out of her, but it was better than risking falling into that trap again. If she didn’t want to be alone, if she wanted them, it was worth doing something different.

Garrus brought wine. Levo-dextro, straw-pale and rather sour, but it’d probably cost a fortune because the protein purification process was so expensive. The glass in her hand gave Shepard something to fiddle with, which was good because she felt like she was walking out on a tightrope, one misstep to an endless fall and a terminal splat. (She’d face down merc squads without anything like this much anxiety. But then, she rarely had this much to lose. If she somehow blew this thing up and lost Garrus and Tali both—

—it didn’t bear thinking about.)

Garrus looked pretty nervy too, tapping his heel against the ground and shifting position. Naturally. From his stories she knew that turian ships were pretty casual about sexual relationships, but they were very much _not_ casual about the chain of command. This was probably making him almost as anxious as it was making her.

Tali took a seat on Shepard’s other side, so that Shepard was between them. She was empty-handed.

“No drink for you?” Shepard asked.

“I’d have to use a straw. A straw in a wineglass looks kind of stupid.”

Shepard couldn’t help but grin. “I thought it was an ‘emergency induction port.’”

Tali groaned. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Nope,” Garrus said.

“Seriously, Tali,” Shepard went on, “I left you alone for five minutes to get Garrus and I find out later you took that time to drunk-dial a Prothean. You are never going to live it down. Not ever.”

“It’s not fair, I don’t have any blackmail material on you,” Tali said plaintively.

“Ask Joker,” Garrus said, “if anyone has the dirt on Shepard it’s him.”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Shepard asked.

Garrus grinned, mandibles flexing. “Whichever side wins,” he said.

But then there was another awkward pause that drew out until Shepard was fiddling with her glass again.

Finally, Tali sighed. “You two are impossible. I had to do all the talking with Garrus, too.” She pointed a finger, in her irate-quarian mode. “Is that fair? I don’t call that fair.”

“Hey.” _That_ got Garrus talking. “You were drunk at the time, as I recall. That hardly counts.”

Tali turned her accusatory finger on him. “I was drunk the _first_ time. Then I came back and said it again, completely sober. So really I had to do the hard part _twice_.”

Garrus didn’t look at all mollified. “Of course you did. I certainly wasn’t going to take advantage of you when you were smashed off your ass.”

“Besides, I don’t think you had to do a lot of confessing with me,” Shepard said. She’d pretty much broken down all over Tali, after all.

Tali rolled her eyes, the gesture barely visible through the smoky amethyst of her helmet. “I honestly didn’t think I was being all that subtle. ‘I have better, Shepard, I have you’? And then I said I’d link suits with you—if you had a suit, I mean—and that was _after_ I explained what it meant.”

Garrus’ eyeplates rose. “Okay, I’ll admit,” he said, “that doesn’t sound particularly subtle. It sounds kind of hammer-to-the-head unsubtle, actually.”

“…I’m not sure who that’s more insulting to, me or her,” Shepard said.

Garrus’ mandibles widened, and he shrugged again. “What can I say,” he said. “I’m a multitasker.”

“All right, all right,” Tali said. “Somebody has to be unsubtle, though. You two are always too—too _cool_ to say what you actually want, and nothing ever goes anywhere.”

And Shepard knew this was her cue, and for the first time, with Tali so warm and near and Garrus leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, eyes as bright and clear a blue as an untroubled sky, for the first time she could say it out loud. “I want,” she said. “I want you. Both of you, because apparently I’m—really greedy like that.” And there, Garrus’ rumbling laugh, which made her feel a little less like she was edging out over the abyss. “I don’t want to be alone anymore,” she said, and her voice sounded strange to her ears, thinner and softer, as if it had been stripped down to its core.

Garrus reached out, silently, took her hands where they’d draped off her knees and slid his fingers in between hers. They didn’t fit quite neatly, three to five, his broader and longer and claw-tipped and hers smaller and slimmer and softer. But they fit, and the touch shot to her stomach as warm and intoxicating as a gulp of brandy. And Tali scooted over, just enough that she was leaning into Shepard’s side, soft and warm and—as Garrus had said—surprisingly heavy, solid and real.

“And I,” Tali said, “want to touch you. Skin to skin, not with the damn suit in the way.”

“Won’t that make you sick?”

Tali shrugged; Shepard could feel the motion electrifying through her body, close physical touch so simple and yet so rare in her life. “At first. After the—the first time with Garrus I had a terrible fever. But I adapt. My system will get used to you too if we give it a chance.” 

“Then let’s give it a chance,” Shepard said, and felt Garrus’ fingers tighten around hers.

“It’s not long before we reach Earth,” he said. “Just a few days.”

And Shepard knew that was his oblique way of saying what he wanted: to not waste any time.

* * *

Shepard wasn’t used to planning sex, either: again, she’d always fallen into bed with people, figured out what was going on after. But that wasn’t exactly possible here. They all had to get tested for alternate-chirality sensitivity, Tali had to get a whole new set of immunostimulants and antibiotics designed for contact with humans. And maybe in some way that helped, because it meant that for all of them, every step was deliberate.

They were all here because they’d _chosen_ to be, and that all by itself sent a shiver up Shepard’s spine. No accidents, no tumbling into bed, it wasn’t a mistake, it was what they’d sought out.

And here, now, in her quarters was Tali, looking up with her eyes curved in the crescents of light that meant she was smiling, and Garrus standing a little to the side and on his face such absolute _focus_ that it humbled her.

“I don’t know,” Tali said, twining her fingers together in her habitual anxious gesture, “I don’t know if you’ll like the way I look, you know, with the mask off.”

“I have seen your face before,” Shepard said.

“Ye-es,” Tali said, “but you weren’t really looking.” And that was true, as far as it went. When Tali had taken her helmet off on Rannoch, it had felt inappropriate, somehow, to gawk at her. Like an invasion of privacy. For Tali, it had been a first chance to see her own world with her own eyes, and it had felt… just wrong to take the opportunity to stare. So she’d gotten a glimpse only, enough to know that Tali had a profile much like a human’s and that her eyes were even brighter when not seen through the smoked visor.

“Well, then I’d like to look now,” Shepard said, and immediately recognized the soft hiss as Tali released the electromagnetic seals on her suit. It was hard to do research on quarians (whereas Fornax had a broad and inspiring selection of vids about turians), but she knew enough to know that when the e-mag seals were turned on, you’d need heavy machinery to pry a quarian’s mask off… but with the seals cracked, you could just lift it off.

So it was an invitation. And—boldened by the feeling of Garrus’ arm sliding around her waist from behind as he moved smoothly around them—Shepard took it, and lifted off Tali’s faceplate.

She was pretty sure she would have still loved Tali if she’d looked like a cockroach. So it was a wonder that Tali was so… beautiful, her heart-shaped face so much like a human’s or an asari’s, small nose and smooth cheeks and pointed chin. Her cowl slipped back over long, feathery dark hair, and her eyes were luminous as the moon.

Shepard had just a moment to register all that before Tali _pounced_ , flinging arms around Shepard’s neck and kissing her with so much enthusiasm that Shepard staggered back a step. Garrus caught her, one arm tightening around her waist and the other bracing her shoulder. And god, it was heady, Garrus at her back warm and strong and chuckling in Shepard’s ear as Tali kissed her soft and hungry, and the cinnamon-metal of Garrus’ plates and the flowers-and-lightning scent of Tali’s hair.

Tali kissed a little clumsily (and it was a rush to think that it was because Tali had probably never before kissed someone else who had _lips_ ) but with plenty of enthusiasm to make up for it. Shepard slipped her tongue in, felt the points of surprisingly sharp little teeth and then the silky brush of Tali’s tongue. She tasted clean and hot and oddly _green_ , as though she’d been chewing wheatgrass, and when Shepard pressed, tasted, stroked, Tali chirped with pleasure in a way that shot heat straight down her body.

They broke apart, Tali’s hands still tangled in her hair and her mouth parted as she breathed fast and heavy. She hummed happily and then gave Shepard a nudge on one shoulder that turned her toward—

—Garrus, his eyes sharp and alert with the same intensity he brought to a firefight. Her breath trembled and caught in her throat and then he bent his head and kissed her too.

So different than the softness of Tali’s lips, her yielding urgency. Garrus kissed her slow and hard, the plates around his mouth firm but flexible and smooth as suede, except where the scars had turned his plates to sandpaper. His tongue slid along hers, long and powerful, and while she’d explored the pinprick sharpness of Tali’s fox-fangs she didn’t dare drag her tongue along the knifeblades of Garrus’ long teeth. He kissed her and she kissed him back and he rumbled with amusement or pleasure—or, knowing Garrus, both?—and she could both hear and feel it, rising from his chest through her body and making her shiver.

“Oh,” she said, soft and breathless, when he lifted his head from hers, and Tali laughed behind her.

“Turians don’t do a lot of kissing, as a rule,” Garrus said, and flared his mandibles by way of explanation: rigid mouthplates, and rows of serrated teeth, more intimidating than enticing for any sane person. Then he shrugged and grinned. “But as it turns out, I kinda like it.”

“Bad turian,” Shepard said.

“You like me that way,” Garrus countered.

“Didn’t say I didn’t,” she said, and slid a hand up along his damaged mandible, feeling the roughness of the healed scars there and the vibrations as he made a pleased humming sound. Then she curved her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down forehead-to-forehead, to look straight into his predator eyes, feel the gust of his hot breath on her throat. 

He tensed a little in surprise, then relaxed. “Oh,” he said. “You’ve done your research too.”

“Mm-hm.” She rubbed her fingers beneath his fringe, felt him shiver and sigh. “But there wasn’t much information on quarians, I’m afraid.”

“I imagine not,” Tali said, close and warm.

“I’ve picked up a few things, though,” Garrus rumbled, eyes closing as she stroked the back of his neck. “I can probably help you out. If you ask nicely.”

They undressed each other. Garrus’ clothes were simplest, but they fastened in places she never would have guessed, latching across the spurs of his hips and the ridge of his cowl. Tali’s suit needed more care: Shepard stroked her hands across the embroidery-decorated outer layer until her fingers found the seams, peeling away the thick rubbery protective cuticle and then the whisper-thin nanoweave beneath. Naked, Garrus was leaner than she’d expected, whipcord-thin and flexible and spiked and dangerous as a thornbriar, but sculptured and shining beneath the lights of the Loft. He stood as alert and as easily as a hunting falcon, streamlined and sure as if he’d been shaped for flight. And Tali’s skin was cream-pale, but gilded in a transparent film as iridescent as the scales on a butterfly’s wing. Dark lines trailed down the arch of her swan-long neck and curved around her breasts, her slim waist, the swell of her hips.

“You’re beautiful,” Tali said, echoing her thoughts, as she slipped one long finger down from the dip of Shepard’s throat to her clavicle. Tali’s finger was as soft as her skin; the sharp claw at the tip retracted like a cat’s.

“I don’t know the last time someone’s said that,” she said. “People usually go for ‘intimidating.’ Sometimes ‘scary.’”

“Well,” Tali said, flicking her glowing gaze up to Garrus, “’scary’ and ‘sexy’ aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“I resent that,” Garrus said mildly. “I’m not particularly scary by turian standards.”

“You’re beautiful too,” Shepard said. “Both of you. In completely different ways.”

It was a good thing her bed was so big, because they all fit. Shepard couldn’t stop herself from exploring Garrus’ plates with her fingertips—surprisingly warm and smooth, giving a little beneath her exploring touch. She stroked along the deep curve of his pectoral plates, finding the soft skin in the gaps between them and making him hiss with surprised pleasure. Broad patches of that surprisingly-soft skin marked his slim waist and he groaned outright when she pressed her palms flat there, her touch bold and direct. And at the same time, Tali pressed up against her back, soft breasts and hard nipples, and catlike teeth nibbling at her shoulder and throat. Tali’s hair tumbling over Shepard’s skin, featherlight and warm, sent little ripple-shocks all up and down her back.

Tali was soft as velvet and Garrus was smooth as new leather and they were both so _warm_ by human standards—she could feel Garrus’ heartbeat ticking at a rapid pace beneath his ribs, Tali’s breath panting against her shoulder—and she let herself be lost in the sheer physical pleasure of it for a while, the way they felt, the heady scent of flowers and metal and leather and ozone on the air. (How did she smell to them, salt and animal sweat? Was it pleasant or unpleasant, alien or familiar?)

Tali caught her hand and together they tracked a touch down Garrus’ chest, over his twitching stomach as he hitched a breath and moaned two-toned and delicious. Tali guided her hand to the Y-shaped vent at his groin, guarded with strong, flexible plates.

“That’s pretty direct,” Garrus said, with as much irony as someone could in the situation. (Which is to say: not much.)

“Like you don’t like it, Vakarian,” Tali said. (And it was so strange and yet so reassuring how much _themselves_ they were, even here, even now.) Tali let go of Shepard’s hand, let her do her own exploring, feeling the way the plates shifted and gave as she touched gently and then, gaining confidence, more boldly. Tali continued, “You’re already loosening up.”

“You’re always in such a hurry,” Garrus said, eyes fluttering shut, and Shepard didn’t know or care which of them he was talking to. Maybe both of them.

“You know me, up close and personal, with a shotgun or otherwise,” Tali said, leaning back a little and letting Shepard do the exploring, but still close enough that Shepard could feel her warm and near. Shepard kept stroking along the vent, feeling his plates, yes, loosening and opening. Just the flushed-blue tip of his cock emerged from the gap, shining with moisture.

“I can’t, _ah!_ , argue with that in _this_ context,” Garrus said, and then very suddenly his whole length everted into her hand, long and thick and hot to the touch, and hardening before her eyes. “Up close and personal is _fine by me_.”

“Whereas I’ve always prided myself on finesse during battle,” Shepard murmured, and dropped her head to lick up his shaft.

Garrus’ response was both immediate and gratifying. He arched hard and when he moaned the flanging of his voice went absolutely wild. She pressed his hips back down to the bed and Garrus tried to hold still for her. His thighs twitched with the effort as she trailed her tongue in scrolling patterns up to the tip, sucked, shifted to kiss just under the head.

Tali made a curious little noise, shifting away, watching intently, and that sure gaze made it all the more erotic.

_“Fuck_ ,” Garrus said reverently. “Shepard.”

He was thick and ridged and she’d never been all that practiced at deep throating, so Shepard could only take him partway in, but that was pretty clearly _plenty_ for Garrus. He hummed and groaned, dug his talons into the bed, whispered obscenities and pleaded. And next to her, Tali _watched,_ her fingers slipping down the curve of her belly to between her legs.

Shepard had always enjoyed this act, and the alienness of Garrus made it even more pleasurable. He tasted as spicy and leathery and metallic as he smelled, and the bumps and rides of his cock rubbed against her lips and her palate; he was wetter than a human, smoother, protected by his sheath. And he made noises like she’d never heard before: low throbbing hums, groans that rasped and rumbled, a twinned moan and her name breaking up into tonal syllables on the rough music of his voice.

She couldn’t say how long she kept at it, tasting and feeling him and listening to him moan and seeing Tali touching herself and whimpering not a foot away—before Garrus dug his claws into her hair and tugged gently but insistently until she let him go and looked up at him.

“Problem?” she asked, her voice husky.

“Nnnno,” he said. “But if you keep that up the fun will be over really fast.” And then he nudged her toward Tali, curled on her side and touching herself with languorous slowness.

Shepard grinned and rolled over, pinning Tali to the bed. Tali gave her a laughing, breathless smile in return and Shepard couldn’t help kissing her—kissing her, twining fingers through her thick soft hair, tasting her clever tongue and her small sharp fangs. Then kissing her chin, her inhumanly long and arched throat, her breasts.

“Keelah,” Tali murmured, and then, when Shepard let her mouth trail lower, “ _oh_ ….”

It wasn’t that far off to compare Tali’s skin to a butterfly’s wing. Overlaid on her skin was a thin iridescent layer, shimmering golden in the light, and the black lines that marked her skin were part of that layer—and they didn’t stay the same but shifted subtly, trembled with her breath and the beating of her heart. Shepard followed the lines with her lips, her tongue, as Tali’s fingers carded through her hair and she twitched and whimpered and moaned her encouragement. Lower and lower over her flat tense belly until Shepard was nuzzling between Tali’s legs, parting her velvet-soft thighs and licking along her slit.

“Oh,” Tali said, and then tipped her head back and let out a string of quarian obscenities that the translator didn’t know how to interpret.

“Hmm,” Garrus said, rolling over and pressing himself against her side. He was watching now, as Tali had been just a little while before. “Humans really like using their mouths.”

“Yeah, well,” Shepard said, “we’re mouthy.” She licked again and heard Tali half-shriek, saw her dig her fingers into the bedding.

“She’s pretty sensitive,” Garrus rumbled in her ear. “I think it’s probably the suit. If you’re used to having every sensation mediated through three centimeters of padding—”

“Oh don’t _stop_ ,” Tali wailed.

“—it must be pretty intense once you get it off,” Garrus finished.

Shepard didn’t stop. She propped herself up on knees and elbows and parted Tali’s folds with her thumbs, licked her slowly, carefully from top to bottom, bottom to top. Tali wasn’t that much different from a human woman, but her labia had more layered folds, and instead of one short, rounded clitoris she had two, longer and slimmer, like a flower’s styles. A human woman might look a bit like an orchid; apparently for a quarian woman, the similarity was more literal.

She licked, she tasted, she teased the slender filaments and then dipped lower to slide in with her tongue; she listened to the throaty music of Tali’s moans, her stifled curses and incoherent pleas, the way she writhed, the absolutely intoxicating way she opened her thighs wider and canted her hips in a silent request for more. And she was so sensitive—Garrus had been right about that—that every lick, every touch, every _breath_ made her twitch and moan and gasp.

Shepard was so intent on what she was doing that she didn’t notice Garrus shifting until suddenly his rough strong hands were spreading her thighs and he was licking her from behind, slow and hot from her perinium to her aching clitoris. The slick-rough pressure of his tongue on her made her muffle a cry against Tali’s folds, and Tali’s hips _jerked_ in response as she moaned helplessly.

“Oh god,” Shepard whimpered against Tali’s pubis, “Garrus, I can’t concentrate if you—”

“You don’t have to concentrate,” Tali said, “I’m almost there, I want to keep going, it’s so—hot to see him—licking you like—”

Garrus didn’t reply at all, just growled and licked her again, swirling around her clit and then dipping back down to slip into her and she sobbed with her mouth open against Tali’s sex and pressed with her tongue—wet and messy and wanting, wanting her own orgasm, wanting Tali’s too, wanting Garrus, just _wanting_ and greedy and seeking everything at once—

And bless her oversensitivity, Tali shrieked and clawed at the bed and came. She was magnificent in orgasm, wailing high and sweet, eyes crescents of shining light and cheeks flushed, beautiful body arched almost entirely off the bed, her hair spilling around her and she tasted of musk, ozone, lilacs.

Shepard reveled in it but couldn’t stop, Garrus was licking her still, sliding in and out of her cunt and then massaging her clit, sliding back to tease her lips and then forward again to coax her, bringing her closer and closer. She pressed her cheek against Tali’s jumping belly and moaned helplessly, felt Tali’s extended claws stroking delicately through her hair. She was so close, she was so close, she was going to—

“Stop,” she said, “oh god, stop.”

“Mm?” Garrus asked, easing back, licking the inside of her thighs, and she was so near orgasm that that slick touch was almost enough to get her off all by itself.

“I’m about to—stop or I’m going to—”

“Go ahead,” Garrus purred, and licked her clit, and she almost did, just like that, pressing her face into Tali’s belly and with Garrus’ mouth on her.

“No,” she managed, trying to put into words what she wanted instead. “No, I want, I want, god I want, I want you inside me. I want to be—” her voice cracked.

Garrus hesitated, and then pulled away. Tali caressed her, slow touches down her back and up her thighs, and then they moved together, Shepard getting up on her knees and leaning against Tali. Tali was flushed now—Garrus was blue-blooded and so turned blue with the blush, but Tali was red-blooded like a human and the flush turned her golden skin to sunset shades—and reached over to nudge Garrus onto his back. He raised a brow-ridge, then shifted to recline against the headboard.

Shepard straddled him, took his erection between her hands and stroked it, and he rocked his head back and sighed. Tali slid up next to her, pressed against her back, kissed her shoulder and the side of her throat as Shepard rose up on her knees and positioned herself.

It wasn’t quite easy; Garrus was shaped and angled differently than a human man, ridged and tapered, and she had to go slowly. But she was so wet and so ready that it helped, and when she had his tip inside and was sinking down onto him it felt so _good_ , stretching and rubbing in ways that were unfamiliar and yet just right, and as she watched he tipped his head back, mandibles drawn close to his face and mouth open in soundless pleasure. It was the look on his face as much as the pleasure crackling inside her that gave her the confidence to push all the way down, sink and grind onto him until she was utterly filled and her breath catching on little gasping moans.

Tali kissed her throat, slid a hand around her waist. Three broad fingers on her skin should have felt alien, but instead it seemed completely natural. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Tali said. “It always feels incredible for me.” Shepard couldn’t summon enough thought for a verbal response, so she nodded. 

Garrus was still panting, but he pried his eyes open. “You never told _me_ that.” His hands slipped around Shepard’s hips, supporting her as she found a rhythm and began to move.

“I thought all the ‘yes’es and the moaning kind of gave it away,” Tali said. She ran her hands up Shepard’s belly to her breasts; Shepard felt her body sparking both where Garrus slid into her and where Tali’s palms rubbed over her nipples, and had to struggle even to breathe. “Besides, your ego is big enough as it is.”

“Hah,” Garrus said. “This is not exactly going to deflate my ego any.”

“Or mine,” Shepard said. Lightning shot through her, from where Garrus rocked slow and hard into her to Tali’s hands stroking her breasts and back down. Pleasure coiled low and hard; her breath came high and fast and for a moment she almost panicked at the tightness in her chest, but she wasn’t alone now, she was filled and held, she wasn’t alone at all. “Oh god, oh—”

She came hard, back arched and head thrown back, anchored by Garrus inside her and his hands on her hips, Tali behind her and holding on to her, and that was a good thing because it felt as though she was coming apart at the seams and their touch was all that held her together. It went on and on, ripples that spread and expanded and rebounded as though every muscle was a struck bell, and she dragged in a deep breath and cried out nonsense and felt enflamed, burned clean, limp and gasping when it was over.

It was only afterward, with Garrus still hard inside her, that she realized how fast she’d come. Embarrassment rushed through her. Flushed, shaky, she murmured, “Sorry.”

“What for?” Garrus asked. He rolled his hips; she shuddered and ground down against him.

It was slower the second time, Garrus thrusting up into her and Tali touching her, pressing kisses along her shoulders and back. By the end she was drunk on the low noises Garrus made, the way his voice flanged so widely and the way she could feel his sounds purring up through her body. He cried out, mouth open and mandibles wide, and the sight of his bared fangs should have been frightening and wasn’t at all.

Tali slipped a hand down, over her belly, between her legs and circling her clit, and Shepard shuddered, sobbed, garbled both their names and came a second time. This time Garrus’ hands on her hips dragged her down as he ground up into her, and she felt him pulsing hot into her as he panted and growled his own release.

They tumbled into a heap, after; she was sweaty and so was Tali, and Garrus didn’t sweat but he was breathing hard. Shepard’s body felt more relaxed than it had in weeks—months—god, _years_ , and she pulled Garrus down to kiss him and taste his tongue and feel his panting breaths, and then turned a little to kiss Tali, warm and wet and eager. Tali was flushed, pressing her thighs together and kissing hungrily. Garrus reached over—Shepard felt the spines on his elbow brushing her hip—and pressed one long fingers between Tali’s legs.

“Oh yes,” Tali gasped against Shepard’s mouth, “oh _yes_. Watching you two was so—” and then she broke off, kissing Shepard with more urgency as Garrus slid a finger into her, rubbed and stroked without teasing or preamble until Tali came and Shepard swallowed her sobs of pleasure.

She kissed Garrus again, then, Tali’s taste still on her lips as she settled down between them, exhausted and spent. Garrus was warm and solid on one side, Tali warm and soft on the other.

Garrus pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, his voice so low that it vibrated in her bones.

“Yeah,” Shepard said. “Me too.”

Against her shoulder, Tali smiled and shut her eyes.

* * *

Shepard woke slowly, luxuriously warm for the first time in a long time. Garrus lay to one side of her, curved on his side with half her pillows tucked around him to accommodate the arch of his cowl and support his head. One of his arms draped loosely over her shoulders. Tali had tucked herself against her back, warm and smooth, nuzzling close. Just beyond, on the bedside table, Shepard could see the light of Tali’s omnitool, ticking down the hours until she absolutely _had_ to put the suit back on.

The sheets were a tangle, and probably there were punctures in the mattress from Garrus’ toe-claws, but who the hell cared? It had been worth it, all of it, being with both of them, watching them together, the way they cared for each other, the way they included her.

Carefully, so as not to wake them, she slithered out of bed. Garrus didn’t shift, even as she squirmed under his arm. Tali, though, immediately rolled over into the warm spot.

After the warmth of being pressed between two bodies (bodies of species whose temperatures ran hotter than humans, no less), Shepard was cold out of the bed, so she snagged her robe and pulled it on. She was sore, not only from the unaccustomed activity (she’d been years without sex, after all) but also from the subtle chafe of Garrus’ plates and the inevitable accidents that happened when both of your lovers had sharp teeth and pointy claws. But the aches were good, they made her feel real and __alive_ , _and probably tomorrow she could convince Tali and Garrus to help her apply the omnigel….

She wandered over to the big window opposite the fishtanks and gazed out.

Stars, stark white on black, spinning out to eternity. She wasn’t an astrometrist, so she didn’t know which of them were Trebia or Tikkun. Maybe none of them, if they were pointing the wrong way. Still, for the first time since she’d been spaced, they looked almost… friendly. For the first time in a long time, they looked welcoming instead of intimidating, and she could see the hope of victory amid them instead of just the possibility of defeat.

It was probably the post-sex haze talking, but hell, she’d take it.

She heard the clicking of bare talons on the floor, which was warning enough that she didn’t jump when Garrus laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Did I wake you?” she asked, soft.

“Nah,” he said, equally soft. His whisper made her shiver. “Turians don’t sleep in long blocks of time like humans do.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Quarians apparently sleep plenty, though,” he said, his tone affectionate. Shepard followed his gaze. Tali had managed to stretch out into the space vacated by Shepard and Garrus, her dark hair tumbled in her face and her limbs sprawled. Garrus continued, “Tali sleeps like the—Tali sleeps really deeply.”

Shepard heard what he’d almost unthinkingly said— _Tali sleeps like the dead_ —and winced. Too close, too soon, danger too near…. “And she sleeps like a cat, too,” she said, to lighten the mood.

“Like a what?”

“Earth animal. Small, but famous for being able to stretch out and take up a surprising amount of space for their size.” She smiled to her reflection in the window. “Also soft and cuddly and inclined to purr, which makes it all too easy to forget about the sharp teeth and claws and the independent temperament.”

“Hmm,” Garrus said. He slid an arm around her waist. Tali had been right, Garrus was like her and didn’t talk about his feelings much, but she was finding it wasn’t that hard to figure them out anyway. “Apt.”

She leaned back into him, the warmth of his body and his solid strength that could bear her weight without staggering. She felt him nuzzle his mandible and cheekplate against her temple. “Garrus?”

“Mm?”

“It’s going to be really hard to send you two into danger, now. And there’s a lot of danger coming up.”

Garrus didn’t say anything for a moment. His thumb stroked the side of her waist and hip. Finally, he said, “Having regrets?”

“No,” Shepard said. It would be hard, yes, but how much harder, how much harder to face this all in terror of dying alone again? No. Now, no matter what else happened, she wouldn’t be alone. Even if she was alone, she wouldn’t be _alone_.

The darkness and the enormity was still there, but it wasn’t uncaring anymore. Garrus’ arm circled her and he breathed deep and steady at her back, and behind her was Tali, curled and sleeping in their bed, soft and sharp all at once. Stupid as it was, cliche as it was, the universe held hope.

“No,” she repeated. “Not a single one.” And then she turned in his arms and pulled his head down, forehead-to-forehead. For the moment she looked not out to the distant, demanding stars, but into the much smaller world made in the space between them, his eyes and hers, his breath and hers. She murmured, “Let’s go reclaim the bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> ....yeah, so, that last scene: Shepard's quarters don't have a window. :P (In my limited defense, I was traveling for two months when I wrote this, and I didn't have access either to the game itself or to most of my fic-writing reference resources.) I ultimately decided not to rewrite the scene to fix the issue, but I wanted to say that I am aware of it.
> 
> The title comes from Eleanor Wilner's brilliant poem ["Without Regret."](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171707)


End file.
